The Beginning Series: Megamorphs One
by Aislyn Marie
Summary: The Animorphs decide to take a break from fighting the Yeerks, but things definitely don't go as planned. They get attacked by a terrible monster know as a Veleek, Rachel goes missing and some of them get captured by the Yeerks. The Animorphs must move quickly if they want to defeat this monster before it's too late. AU
1. Chapter 1

**Okay, here's Megamorphs. You guys better enjoy this.**

* * *

_Jake_

My name is Jake. Just Jake. No last name. Or at least no last name I can tell you.

I am an Animorph. I guess that makes me one of the most hunted, endangered species on Earth. The Yeerks want me dead. They want my friends dead. So if they knew who I was, and how to find me, I wouldn't have a chance.

That's why I won't tell you my last name. And I won't tell you what city or state I live in. Because I want to go on living. I want to go on living so I can go on fighting them.

Are you one of those people who looks up at the night sky and wonders whether there is life out there among the stars? Do you wonder about UFO's? Do you wonder whether aliens will ever come to Earth?

Well, stop wondering. The Yeerks are here.

They're a species of parasite - just little slugs, really. Little slugs that crawl inside your head and wrap themselves around your brain and make you do whatever they want you to do.

When that happens you stop being a true human being. You become a Controller. That's what we call a human who is under the control of a Yeerk. When you talk to a Controller, you may be looking at a human face, you may hear a human voice, but what you're really talking to is a Yeerk.

And they are everywhere. If you think you haven't seen one, you're wrong. The policeman in his patrol car, the clerk at the grocery story, your teacher, your pastor, your doctor: any of them might be a Controller. Your mother, father, sister, or best friend: They could all be Controllers.

I know. My brother Tom is one of them. They have taken my brother from me and made him an enemy. I sit at the breakfast table every morning and make small talk, knowing all the while that Tom is not Tom anymore.

And they have taken two of my best friends' mother. Everyone thinks that Marco and Gilberto's mother is dead. Only they and I know the truth: she, too, is one of them.

They are everywhere. They can be anyone.

They tear lives apart. They do unspeakable things. And we stand against them alone. Only we know the threat. We six: six Animorphs and one Andalite.

Six human kids with the power to become any animal we can touch. And a kid from another planet who looks like some weird mix of deer, human and scorpion.

The six of us against all the might of the Yeerks, and all the evil genius of their leader, Visser Three.

Which is why Rachel was worried about leaving, even for a weekend.

We were all together that Friday evening - Marco, Gilberto, Cassie, Tobias, Rachel and me. Ax wasn't there because he would have had to change into his human morph. He doesn't like to become human. I think he feels naked without his deadly tail.

So it was just the six of us in Cassie's barn, surrounded by all the chattering, snuffling, chirping, preening (and smelly) animals in their cages. The barn is also the Whildlife Rahabilitation Center. Cassie's parents are veterinarians. They use their barn to take in sick or injured wild animals.

"It's just this stupid, two-day gymnastics camp I signed up for a long time ago," Rachel was saying. "It's no big deal. It's something I was going to do back... you know, before."

"Rachel, you should go," Cassie said. "Our entire lives cannot be about fighting the Yeerks. We have to try to be seminormal. I mean, it can't all be danger and battle and fear, right? So go. But for now, help me lift this crow's cage. He's going up on that self.

Cassie was trying to get us to help clean up the barn. We used the barn to get together. It was too dangerous to talk about Yeerk stuff in our other, more public, hang outs. Someone might overhear.

"Sassie is right, Rachel," Tobias agreed. "We're all going to end up going away at some point. Every once in a while I go to Canada to visit my cousin. Then I'll be gone for, like, five books or something."

"Books?" I repeated.

"Weeks. I said weeks," Tobias lied.

"No, you definitely said books."

"I already told Melissa Chapman I wasn't going," Rachel said, going back to her own topic. "She went up to the camp this afternoon, right after school."

Marco, who had had his nose buried in a book, looked up at her. "Yeah, I saw her off. She seemed disappointed that you weren't attending. I suppose it's because she's sometimes depressed about how lonely she feels. There's only so much I can do to keep her company, and I'm sure she was hoping for some female companionship. It's too bad, really. She'll be there. Alone. With no one to comfort her but the unwelcome harshness of the balance beam as she gets so distressed that she falls face first into its cold - "

"Okay, shut up, I'll go," Rachel said. "I'll go. You didn't have to guilt trip me into it. I'll catch the bus tomorrow morning."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Marco said. "Guilt trip. Don't be silly."

"Remember when he used to stutter all the time?" Tobias asked. "That was cute."

"You guys wouldn't go away, so he's starting to get used to you," Gilbert said.

"This is him _starting_ to get used to us?" said Tobias. "We need to set him back a bit to protect ourselves from not-at-all-shy Marco. Gimme a kiss, Marco."

"W-what? No!" Marco shrieked. He got up and ran to hide behind his brother.

Rachel rolled her eyes. "You guys... you'll stay out of trouble while I'm gone, won't you?"

"We'll be fine, Rachel," Tobias said. "Hey, since Marco got to kiss Melissa when she left, does this mean I get to kiss you?"

"Marco kissed Melissa?" Rachel asked.

"I told you that in confidence!" Marco said.

"I thought you broke up with that bitch," Gilbert growled.

"She broke up with me, no thanks to you, jerk."

"We should all just enjoy a nice, normal weekend!" I said, talking loudly over everyone. "Have normal fun. We've had plenty of danger and excitement."

Gilbert snorted. "Yeah, right. Some of us are going to have more fun than some others. _Some_ of us are going to pool parties that some of us were not invited to." He gave Marco a look. "Doesn't that girl know that it's rude to invite one twin and not the other?"

I rolled my eyes. "Here we go again."

Cassie rescued us. "I need someone strong to come outside with me, help me carry in some new cages from the truck. Gilberto?"

"Fuck that, do it yourself," Gilbert replied.

"Gil!" Marco gasped. "Just because you're in a bad mood doesn't mean..."

"I'm coming, Cassie," I said, ignoring Marco's rant.

Outside, out of the golden glow of the barn's lights, it was getting dark. A full moon had risen, and you could just see the first stars off to the east.

"It seems strange - Rachel going away - even for a couple days," Cassie said. "And it seems even stranger that it would seem strange. I mean, it should be no big deal."

"Well, I guess when life turns completely crazy, it's the normal things that start to seem strange."

Cassie nodded slowly. For a while she said nothing. She just stood there with her arms crossed, looking up at the moon.

I climbed down off the truck. "What's bothering you?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. Just... a feeling. I don't know. Bad dreams, I guess.

"I have those, too," I said. "We all do. You can't live through all this and not have it bother you. What's the dream about? The ant thing?"

We'd morphed ants once. We'd gone down into an ant tunnel and had been attacked by an enemy of colony ants. No one waned to go through that ever again. Not ever.

"No, not the ants," Cassie said. "At least not directly. It's... it's dumb. There's... something. I don't even know what it is. But it's not a good thing. And it asks me to make a choice. In the dream I have to decide who lives and who dies."

I moved closer to Cassie and put my arm around her shoulder. There were goose bumbs on her bare arms.

"I never used to be afraid, Jake," Cassie said. "Not of anything. And now it's like I'm afraid all the time."

"You deal with it, though," I said. It made me nervous talking about feelings like this. I guess I think if you just don't talk about the fear, it will go away. "You always deal with it," I repeated.

"So far," Cassie said softly. "So far."


	2. Chapter 2

**Who else forgot that this existed?**

* * *

_Rachel_

My name is Rachel. I live with my mom and my two little sisters. We live pretty close to Jake, who lives pretty close to Marco and Gilberto. Tobias doesn't really live close to anyone, and Cassie is the farthest one out because she lives on a farm.

I guess we're a pretty average bunch of kids. I mean, we were a pretty average bunch.

Marco and Gilberto, who are twins, live with their dad. I live with my mom. The others all have both parents around. We go to school. We do homework. We hang at the mall. We listen to music. Go to movies on the weekend. Normal. Boringly average.

Until one night when we happened to hook up together at the mall and decided to take a shortcut through an abandoned construction site off the highway.

It wasn't something that was out of place or different or anything. We were already a group. Jake and Tobias are best friends, Marco and Gilberto are brothers and best friends. Cassie is my best friend. We all sort of started to hang out with each other, so it wasn't odd for us to walk home together.

But what happened that night was definitely not normal.

See, that's where the Andalite spaceship landed. Right there in the construction site. That's where we saw our first alien. That's where we learned about the Yeerk threat. And that's where the Andalite, Prince Noorlin, gave us our power to morph.

It's were Noorlin died, too. We watched it happen. We watched that brave, decent, kind creature be murdered by Visser Three. Murdered for trying to protect the people of Earth.

The Andalite left us the burden of fighting the Yeerks, and gave us just one weapon: the power to morph. Like all weapons, it has dangers even to those who use it for a good cause. A two-hour limit.

But it is an awesome power. We have done some damage to the Yeerks. And to be honest with you, sometimes the morphing power is just plain fun. Right now, though, my "normal" life was calling.

It was already getting warm by the time I walked over to school the next morning. The bus to the camp was due to come at eleven. I got to school an hour early.

I stopped on the sidewalk in front of the school and checked my watch. The sun was climbing fast, and you could tell it was going to be a really hot day. I smiled. It would be a good day for flying.

I crossed the athletic field and headed for the woods behind the school. Tobias flies a lot in the mornings, usually in the same places. I wanted to see if I could catch him before I left.

But it wouldn't be easy to find him if he was in morph. I knew I would need great eyes and speed to find him and still get back in time to catch the bus.

It's funny how it never even occurred to me that I was in a very dangerous position. See, my mom and my friends all thought I was heading to camp. They wouldn't expect to see me for a couple of days. But the camp people didn't think I was coming. So they wouldn't expect to see me, either.

But none of that occurred to me. After all, what did I have to worry about? Little did I know.

So, I entered the woods, put my outer clothing in my bag, hid it beneath some low-lying bushes, and took a quick look around to make sure I was alone. Then I began to morph.

I focused my mind on one of the many animals whose DNA is a part of me.

Every morph is unique. The changes never happen the same way twice. This time, the first thing to change was my mouth. My lips grew hard and stiff. And when I rolled my eyes downward, I could see my mouth become bright yellow and bulge outward.

As that happened, I began to shrink. The pine needle-covered ground came up toward me as I lost a food of height within a few seconds. Then another foot.

The strangest thing, though, was my skin. The flesh on my bare arms began to melt like candle wax. It melted and ran together. It formed intricate patterns, like a tattoo of feathers. Suddenly, the painted feather batterns were no longer just designs. Actual feathers began to emerge.

The feathers were dark brown, except for the ones that replaced my blond hair and the skin of my face and neck. Those feathers were all snowy white.

By the time the morph was nearly complete, I only stood about two feet tall. My feet had split open and formed yellow talons, each of which ended in a wicked, hooked claw.

My arms rose up, horizontal. Long feathers sprouted from them, even as my solid, heavy, human bones became hollow and light.

It took just a few minutes for the transformation to be done. I was no longer human. I was a bald eagle.

I turned to face the breeze and opened my wings. They stretched six feet from tip to tip. I felt the wind press against my feathers, stretching my muscles. I flapped several times with great power, and then... I was airborne! I drew my talons up snug against my body.

I flapped and rose. I flapped more, and soared above the trees. The top branches reached for me but missed. I flapped still more and caught a good, strong, headwind. It was like an invisable wedge that forced me up and up.

Up and up! I rose until I was several hundred feet above the treetops. I could see the school down below. I could see the bus parked in the empy lot. And, being an eagle, I could see a great deal more.

Looking through the eyes of an eagle is like having built-in binoculars. From hundreds of feet in the air I could see field mice just poking their noses out of their holes. I could see ants crawling up the trunks of trees. I could look down through the water of a stream and see the tiny fish feeding there. I could see everything, like no human will ever see.

I turned toward the woods. It was more likely I would find Tobias out there.

Maybe there is something better than flying free, high above the trees, riding the wind, but I doubt it. It was freedom beyond any dream of freedom. I love it. For all the pain that has come from the war with the Yeerks, I swear sometimes just being able to fly makes it all worthwhile.

It was then that I spotted something interesting below me. It was a deer-like animal, running swiftly through the trees. When I focused my laser-intensity eagle sight, I could see the semihuman torso and face and deadly scorpion tail.

Ax! Or Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, to use his complete name. Ax is an Andalite. The only Andalite to survive a terrible space battle with the Yeerks. Prince Noorlin was his father.

It was fun watching him run. I've never seen anything that can look as delicate and cute one minute - and as dangerous the next - as an Andalite.

I decided to swoop down over Ax and say hi. I spilled a little air from my wings and dropped, trilled by the feeling of a controlled fall from hundreds of feet up. It's like jumping off a skyscraper, knowing you can survive.

I dropped toward the trees.

I actually had time to notice the nest in a high branch. Just out of the corner of my eye. I had time to think, 'Isn't that cute? Baby birds.'

And then they hit me.

SWOOP!

SWOOP!

Faster than me! More agile! Small, dark birds zipped straight at me like they were going to hit. Too many of them!

SWOOP! SWOOP! SWOOP!

I turned a hard left. In a flash I knew what was happening. They thought I was attacking their nest. They were "mobbing" me! Trying to drive me off.

I banked a hard turn. Too fast! I was still going fast from the dive. Too fast! Bank left! Turn!

WHAM!

I barely saw the tree trunk before I hit. Headfirst.

Down I fell. Down through branches that tore at me, banged me, slapped me, ripped at my feathers.

I hit the ground hard. I was hurt. I knew I was hurt. Fading out. My mind was swimming. Human thoughts... eagle instinct, all swirling, shifting. I was falling down, down a dark well.

Down...

_Morph out_, I told myself. _Rachel... MORPH OUT!_

And then I was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Surprise, it's this.**

* * *

_Marco_

"I don't know who that bitch thinks she is," Gil was saying. "But... just... I don't even have words! That's, like, inviting Jake and not inviting Tobias, except way worse. Tobias is invited, by the way."

My name is Marco. I am an Animorph. I'm also a brother. A brother who puts up with a _lot_, because Gil. That's it. Just 'because Gil.' It's terribly exhausting.

((So you are not wanted at this party. But you want to go, anyway?))

That was Aximili speaking via thought-speak. Andalites, like him, don't have mouths, so they communicate telepathically. Although, it's not telepathy exactly. I'm not sure how they evolved into creatures that can talk with their minds, but it is useful in the sense that we can all use it while in morph. Even me, which is nice because my mornping is already odd enough.

"Gil doesn't _really_ want to go to the party, Aximili," I told him. "But since I was invited, he feels like he absolutely must go. He's also entirely convinced that there's a reason Darlene didn't invite him that has nothing to do with the fact that he's a bully who's mean to everyone at school except me."

"Who the fuck is Darlene?" Gil asked.

"She's the one who is _throwing the party_."

"Maybe she didn't invite me because she likes me," Gil suggested. "That's something a girl would do, right?"

Aximili looked puzzled. ((Is that common among humans? Do you avoid the ones you like?))

"Well, not like. Like. Marco likes you. But he certainly doesn't like you. There's like, and then there's like, like."

Aximili stared at him with his main eyes. His main eyes are normal, I suppose, in the way that they're in the same place as human eyes would be. Then he has two other eyes that are mounted on stalks that stick out of the top his head. They look similar to those cute little horns giraffes have. His stalk eyes can be used to look in any direction, dispite what his main eyes or other stalk eye is doing.

((I am confused,)) Aximili said.

"I don't think it's really meant to be understood," I told him. "It's one of the many human things that make no sense what-so-ever." Then to Gil I said, "You should take Aximili with you."

"What?" he demanded. "No way, he's ugly."

"Uh, no, he isn't," I said. "Besides, if you're going to do something stupid, I want you to have some sort of backup incase something goes wrong. And something will go wrong. So Aximili will go with you."

((But Prince Jake will be at the party, won't he?))

"Yeah, but stupid Jake isn't going to do anything useful, now is he?"

((Pardon me if I sound skeptical, and please don't be offended,)) Aximili said, ((but I sense that maybe this is a dishonourable idea.))

((That's because it _is_ a dishonourable idea.))

Tobias. He zipped down swiftly overhead and landed on a low branch. He was carrying something in his beak.

"Good, you're back," Gil said. "Gimme."

I crossed my arms and glared up at Tobias. "Why are you helping him?" I demanded. "It's difficult enough trying to get Gil _not_ to do stupid things, I don't need everyone working against me."

((I'm not,)) Tobias protested. ((But I'm desperate for friendship. I'd do anything for Gilby to like me.)) He paused. ((Also, he said that he would get those mean friends of his to stop calling me offensive names if I did this. Axi, however, you have a chance to not get involved in this.))

((Tobias, I am suffering. I have small, itching bumps on parts of my body. Marco has agreed to help me, if I will help Gilberto. He has a rare medicine that will help.))

Tobias and Gil both stared at me.

"What?" I asked. "Okay, so I'm blackmailing Aximili. I need him to go with Gil, just in case."

"Whatever, I don't care. Just give me the mouse, Tobias," Gil said.

Tobias dropped the mouse and Gil caught it with one hand. It squirmed and he nearly dropped it. But once he began to acquire it, it calmed down.

To morph into an animal, you must acquire it's DNA before doing so. As you do, the animal you are acquiring goes into a trance. It's a very useful part of the acquiring procress. On more than one occasion I've been saved from an animal by the trance, because some dangerous and wild animals don't like it when you touch them.

Once Gil was done acquiring the mouse, I took it. I wasn't going to sneak into the party with Gil and Aximili, but I like having as many morphs as I can, and I don't have a mouse morph yet.

I handed the mouse to Aximili. He had to use both hands to hold onto the mouse. Andalite arms and hands aren't as strong as human ones.

((You realize that Jake will roast you alive for this,)) Tobias said. ((Morphing for personal reasons.))

"You do it all the time," I pointed out.

((I'm stuck in morph,)) Tobias said. ((I was supposed to demorph hours ago, but I forgot.))

"I saw you demorph."

((And I saw you demorph. Right after you were using morphing for personal reasons by flying around with me. What Jake doesn't know won't hurt him.))

"I don't care about your date with each other," Gil snapped. "Let's just go to this stupid party already."

"Any chance that you'll change your mind?" I asked. "You could just come with me. You know, as a human."

((Darlene likes him,)) Aximili said. ((But she doesn't like him.))

((Yeah, that's pretty much how we all feel about Gilby,)) Tobias said with a laugh.


End file.
